For the love of all things paper: Scrapbooking, Card Making, and Paper Crafting

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Mass Cricut-ing Mayhem!!

The last several weeks have found me in the usual chaos that seems to be my normal life now ;) With sickness continuing to plague both myself & my family, a bridal shower, kindergarten field trip, sick husband, wedding, house guests, sick kids, baby shower, my bronchitis & sinus infection, and the usual daily routines of laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning....did I mention sick kids???

In addition to all that, I also found myself in my craft room mass producing sets of alphabets for Ella's Kindergarten class, and tags for the bridal shower & wedding using my Cricut. Here are some pics along with a few things I learned about mass Cricut production:

My first tip is to put away any other projects so that you can't look at them and wish that you were working on them instead of cutting, peeling, and sorting... the repetition gets boring & that adorable layout you've been dying to finish is just staring you in the face! Ugh!!

Using the 12 x 24" cutting mat means your machine needs lots of room! Turn it sideways to allow room for the mat to move.

Peel the paper away from you - not left to right. It seems to help avoid ripped letters/pieces.

The right tools make a BIG difference!

Check your cutting blade periodically. You may need to increase the pressure &/or blade depth as the blade starts to dull.

Do the math BEFORE you commit to a project!! Making 24 sets of alphabets means cutting, peeling, & sorting 624 letters!

Recruit any willing family members! Ella helped me stamp the envelopes that we put the letters into :)

Popcorn is NOT a good snack while paper crafting!

Think of some creative uses for the negative paper....

...of course, some will just have to be put in the recycle bin.

Using 2 cutting mats saves time - while 1 is in the machine being cut, you can peel the cut pieces off of the other mat.

The "A" tags were for shower favors; the "E" tags were for wedding favors.

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About Me

I've been scrapbooking for over 15 years now and fell in love with the things I saw at a Close to My Heart Workshop a few years back. So I signed up as an Independent Consultant and now enjoy showing others why I like their stamps & products so much! My husband & I have been married for 24 years and I spend most of my time trying to keep up with my 2 kids! So just to make sure I am even more exhausted when I collapse into bed after midnight, I thought I'd start a blog :)